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Updated: June 20, 2025
Nikanop Ilyitch, a feeble-looking man who was bailiff or something of the sort, made his appearance at once, listened with servility to all that Kirillovna said to him, said, "it shall be done," went out and gave orders.
"Certainly, madam," answered Kirillovna, and going calmly back to her room she locked the note in an iron-cased box which stood at the head of her bed; she kept in it all her spare cash, and there was a considerable amount of it. Kirillovna had reassured her mistress by her report but the conversation between herself and Akim had not been quite what she represented.
Lizaveta Prohorovna turned round to him. "You need not go away yet, however," she said, with hardly perceptible agitation. She rang the bell and Kirillovna came in from the study. "Kirillovna, tell them to give this gentleman some tea. I will see you again," she added, with a slight inclination of her head. Naum bowed again and went out with Kirillovna.
But in spite of her agitated mistress's warning, Kirillovna did continue speaking of it and half an hour later she went back to Naum, whom she had left in the butler's pantry at the samovar. "What have you to tell me, good madam?" said Naum, jauntily turning his tea-cup wrong side upwards in the saucer. "What I have to tell you is that you are to go in to the mistress; she wants you."
You are as good as a merchant, let alone a house-serf! What do you mean? Don't distress yourself for nothing. Won't you have some tea?" "No, thank you, I don't want it. So you have got hold of my house between you," he added, moving away from the wall. "Thank you for that. I wish you good-bye, my lady." And he turned and went out. Kirillovna straightened her apron and went to her mistress.
"Of course, of course," Lizaveta Prohorovna caught her up eagerly. "Of course, with pleasure. And tell him, in fact, that I will make it up to him. Thank you, Kirillovna. I see he is a good-hearted man. Stay," she added, "give him this from me," and she took a three-rouble note out of her work-table drawer, "Here, take this, give it to him."
At last when the clock was striking two, all was hushed, the bedroom door opened, and Nadyezhda Stepanovna appeared. "Pavel, are you asleep?" she whispered. "No; why?" "Go into your study, darling, and lie on the sofa. I am going to put Olga Kirillovna here, in your bed. Do go, dear! I would put her to sleep in the study, but she is afraid to sleep alone. . . . Do get up!"
I did not know at all how to behave with women, and in their presence I either scowled and put on a morose air, or grinned in the most idiotic way, and in my embarrassment turned my tongue round and round in my mouth. With Elizaveta Kirillovna, on the contrary, I felt at home from the first moment. It happened in this way.
Kirillovna bought her freedom for a considerable sum and married for love a fair-haired young waiter who leads her a dreadful life; Avdotya lives as before among the maids in Lizaveta Prohorovna's house, but has sunk to a rather lower position; she is very poorly, almost dirtily dressed, and there is no trace left in her of the townbred airs and graces of a fashionable maid or of the habits of a prosperous innkeeper's wife.... No one takes any notice of her and she herself is glad to be unnoticed; old Petrovitch is dead and Akim is still wandering, a pilgrim, and God only knows how much longer his pilgrimage will last!
Kirillovna regaled her with tea; Lizaveta Prohorovna herself talked to her. But even these visits did not pass without some bitter experiences for Dunyasha.... As an innkeeper's wife, for instance, she could not wear a hat and was obliged to tie up her head in a kerchief, "like a merchant's lady," said sly Kirillovna, "like a working woman," thought Dunyasha to herself.
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